{"id":182931,"date":"2025-12-09T13:08:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T13:08:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/182931\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T13:08:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T13:08:06","slug":"mccusker-follows-ryan-in-joining-enhanced-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/182931\/","title":{"rendered":"McCusker follows Ryan in joining Enhanced Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max McCusker has become the second Irish swimmer to join the Enhanced Games, a controversial competition that permits athletes to take banned performance-enhancing drugs under medical supervision.<\/p>\n

In October Shane Ryan confirmed his involvement<\/a> and now McCusker, part of the Irish men’s 4x100m medley relay that competed at the Paris 2024 Olympics alongside Ryan, Conor Ferguson and Darragh Greene, has followed suit.<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old is now among the 11 swimmers, three weight lifters and three sprinters that have committed to the Enhanced Games, with the first staging set for May 2026 at a purpose-built complex in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

The venue will have a four-lane 50-metre pool, a six-lane sprint track, and a weightlifting stage.<\/p>\n

Each event will have a total prize purse of $500,000 (\u20ac432,000), with $250,000 (\u20ac216,000) awarded to the winner. There will also be $1m (\u20ac864,000) on offer for competitors who break world records in the 100m sprint on the track and 50m freestyle in the pool.<\/p>\n

McCusker made the announcement on Instagram.<\/p>\n

“If you don\u2019t get it, you weren\u2019t meant to,” he wrote, with Ryan replying to the post: “Welcome to the team.”<\/p>\n

McCusker is the Irish 50m and 100m butterfly record holder<\/p>\n

Sport Ireland said it was “deeply disappointed” with Ryan\u2019s decision to join the Enhanced Games, with Swim Ireland and the Olympic Federation of Ireland also criticising the move.<\/p>\n

“Performance-enhancing drugs aren’t just banned because they can give athletes an unfair advantage,” a Sport Ireland statement read.<\/p>\n

“Many are banned because they can seriously harm athletes’ health. Some of these substances can cause severe, long-lasting medical problems. In extreme cases, athletes have died from using these dangerous drugs.”<\/p>\n

\"Shane
\nThree-time Olympian Shane Ryan announced his retirement from competitive swimming in October<\/p>\n

Ryan has said his decision to join the controversial sporting event is financially motivated<\/a>, though admitted his legacy in the sport will be tainted.<\/p>\n

“When I step out into the real world financially, what do I have? Sadly, Olympic athletes do not get paid well at all,” he told RT\u00c9 Sport.<\/p>\n

“I was on \u20ac18,000 for a number of years and trying to compete and train. Trying to have a job doing that, especially with swimming, is very, very difficult. That’s below minimum wage, especially in Ireland. I was living in Dublin for a very, very long time representing Ireland for over a decade and sacrificed friends and family, missing weddings.”<\/p>\n

“Financially this is a huge thing. I’ve honed a craft for my whole life and I want to take the opportunity.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max McCusker has become the second Irish swimmer to join the Enhanced Games, a controversial competition that permits…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-182931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}